


another place, another time

by clnbd



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: !!!, Canon Divergent, F/F, Spoilers, Unrequited Love, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 13:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18624211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clnbd/pseuds/clnbd
Summary: In every lifetime but this one, Carol gets to love Maria.





	another place, another time

**Author's Note:**

> Endgame SPOILERS ahead.
> 
> I am not in any way an expert on MCU canon. I am also not in any way ready to let go of Natasha.

It’s Natasha who helps her.

Natasha, who came back instead of Steve. Natasha, who understands what it feels like to be stuck, forever young, untethered.

Natasha, who doesn’t ask questions.

* * *

Shuri had shown up to Avengers HQ on an unassuming Wednesday morning while Natasha was doing her midweek conference calls with everyone across the universe. Carol was the only other person there to greet her.

Out of the Wakandan ship came the time travel machine, clearly upgraded, and an instruction booklet that read like it was describing a complicated game of Monopoly. Carol cleared a spot for it in the hangar with only one question.

“You’re done playing with it already?”

Carol was surprised to see Shuri nod.

“It can get you to alternate timelines now. I thought I was fixing a flaw but added the biggest one instead.” Shuri responded, worried. “It’s dangerous.”

“Alternate timelines?” Carol asked, unsure of what she meant.

“Every life you’ve ever lived.”

* * *

The first time they try it, she ends up in Louisiana watching herself worship the ground that Maria Rambeau walked. It’s not much different from her present circumstances in that sense, but they’re older and they’re together. There’s a grey streak in that Carol’s hair.

Carol watches for days.

She sees Monica visit with their grandchildren. She sees Maria and that Carol leave for a vacation. She watches them spend their days together.

When she comes back, Natasha takes one look at her and knows to leave her well alone.

* * *

“Did you want to try it?” She asks Natasha one day after coming back from another place, another time.

“No.” Natasha’s response is short, but not unkind. “Who do you go to see?”

“Myself.” Carol says. “I like to see the lives they’ve gotten to build.”

“Why?”

“I’m in the timeline they’d fear.” Carol tries to make her voice as light as she can manage. She throws the question back at Natasha. “Why don’t you want to look?”

“I’m in the timeline they all want to be in.”

* * *

Natasha takes a vacation about a year after everything and Carol is left in charge of the Avengers for two weeks. Bruce offers to come stay with her, but Carol rejects the offer. She spends the two weeks doing maintenance on every plane in their inventory, staying close to the machine but not touching.

She can still see Shuri’s worry in her head.

When Natasha returns, she looks more worn down than even after she came back from the dead. Carol cooks and they have dinner together. Carol doesn’t ask.

“I’m the godmother of Clint’s children.” Natasha finally says after her third glass of wine; her voice so controlled that Carol can almost physically feel how affected she is.

“I’m Monica’s Auntie Carol.” Carol responds, understanding that they’ve both omitted the _only_ from their respective titles.

* * *

Of course, Natasha insists that Carol go on vacation too. Carol goes to Wakanda for a week, trying to relax and enjoy the hospitality of a king. On her last day, she ventures into Shuri’s lab.

“You’ve used it.” Shuri says to her by way of greeting. “I can tell.”

“Couldn’t help it. It’s hard to resist.” Carol smiles and sits down opposite where she’s working on something that looks like the hard Coke candies Monica is partial to. “But you already know that, right?”

“I watched my father live a hundred lifetimes in one afternoon.” Shuri says, casual. “I don’t recommend it.”

“So you gave it to me.”

“I intended to give it to the one person who wouldn’t use it.”

“Natasha.” Carol says, realizing.

“Turns out she had a roommate.” Shuri looks up, a small smile on her face. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you were being very smart.”

“I feel like I am the smartest person in this whole universe.” Shuri grimaces.

Carol has to agree. She can’t imagine making a window to a different world, looking into it, and having the strength to give it to someone else, someone who’d keep the window shut. She can’t relate to Shuri, who seems like she was born old, graced with wisdom.

She can’t even begin to think of what she has to offer that would make Shuri feel more at ease, less burdened.

“I bet my kid can still kick your ass at everything, though.” She finds herself saying.

Shuri’s laugh is young and real and Carol promises to bring Monica sometime.

* * *

She visits Louisiana next.

Monica is busy, away at some Air Force event and so Carol has no buffer but also no choice but to make the stop. She walks up to the house in plain clothes and braces herself for the worst before knocking.

It is Maria who answers, her eyes bright and smile warm. She gives Carol a hug.

Carol closes her eyes, pretends she’s another Carol. A Carol with red blood and grey hair.

When they let go, Carol snaps violently back to reality.

“Honey.” Maria calls over her shoulder. “Carol’s here.”

Maria’s wife – Monica’s Mama – turns up behind her, greeting Carol with a genuine kindness that she still does not know what to do with.

* * *

“How old are you?” She asks Natasha when she gets back from visiting Fury in New York.

“Twenty-five.” Natasha replies around a mouthful of ice cream that she’s eating directly from the carton.

“How long have you been twenty-five?”

“A hundred years or so.” Natasha’s feet are propped up on her desk, she sounds like she’s talking about the weather. “I’ll be the same for another hundred more.”

“How?”

“You can Google this, you know.”

Carol rolls her eyes.

“Someone messed with my blood.”

“Mine, too.” Carol says.

They don’t talk for a minute. Natasha looks deep in thought.

“Steve was the same as you, always thinking of the great love, the woman who outgrew him.”

“As if you’re any better.”

“I’m not the one visiting Louisiana in every alternate universe.”

Carol leans against the door frame and sighs. She turns and walks away, knowing Natasha will follow with Shuri’s instruction booklet in hand.

* * *

The worst part is that Carol knows this is bad. She also knows that if someone - Natasha - tried to stop her, she'd photon blast them to another dimension.

Watching herself in every alternate universe get exactly what she wants is a terrible drug. She’s not addicted, not yet, but she knows that she soon will be. She tries to distract herself by going on the pointless missions Natasha sends her on and visiting her Skrull friends and flying alongside Monica when she has to ferry planes for the hours. But she thinks about it and thinks about it. When she can’t stand it anymore, she goes to Wakanda to seek Shuri’s advice.

“Can you think of anyone else who wouldn’t use this thing?”

“Just move out.” Shuri says.

Shuri also says. “Pepper Potts.”

“How do you know that for sure?” Carol asks, not wanting to be responsible for someone falling down the rabbit hole.

“Think of what she lost when we last altered time.”

* * *

Pepper takes the machine without question. They fold it up and stick it into the garage behind a sports car that looks barely used. Carol plays with Morgan for a few hours while Natasha and Pepper catch up.

Later, when they’re pulling out of the driveway, Carol notices the screws in the cup holder. They’re custom vibranium screws straight from Shuri’s lab. She raises an eyebrow at Natasha.

“If Morgan can’t put it together.” Natasha says. “Then she can’t use it.”

They stop at a random river on their way back and have a contest of who can throw the screws farthest. Natasha wins.

Carol feels like she’s grieving the loss of something. Like something’s been taken from her. She and Natasha open a bottle of wine after dinner as a result.

“You know, when I came back.” Natasha says. “I was so distraught that we’d won.”

Carol laughs.

“No, no.” Natasha insists. “I felt uneasy. I wanted us to win. I just felt like the fact that Clint was able to get the soul stone in exchange for me lessened the validity of his marriage.”

“It demands what you love most.” Carol says, remembering the story.

Natasha nods. “Then I realized that I was what he loved most, but that it was her he wanted to marry. That they’re two different things.”

“They shouldn’t be.” Carol whispers, thinking of kind dark eyes and a smile that feels like going fast. Thinking of being stuck, stagnant while a love grows old in Louisiana.

“They are in this universe.”

* * *

Carol takes an extended leave in the summer. She stays in Louisiana, sleeps in Monica’s old bedroom, and helps her best friend fix up collector planes. She gets to laugh with her and reminisce about old times. She also gets to know Daisy, Maria’s other half.

Most nights she cries about it. Once or twice she calls Natasha. Every night she calls Fury. It’s hard, watching a great love unfold in front of her without being a part of it. But she has to figure it out, has to get past it.

 _It’s like being remade_ , Natasha had said, _except you get to do it yourself this time_.

Monica visits in July, towing a shy boy along. She introduces Maria and Daisy as her moms, but her eyes are the brightest and proudest when she introduces her Auntie Carol. It’s the best vacation Carol can remember having.

On one of her last nights in Louisiana, she and Maria share a beer and lay out on the grass, watching the sky. Two planes speed by, impossibly close to one another.

“Those look just like our old ones.” Maria says, laughing, probably remembering all the times Carol lost to her in a race.

“Could have been us. From another time.” Carol agrees, not really paying attention to what she’s saying.

“Yeah.” Maria knocks their shoulders together, smiling. “But it still wouldn’t be _us_ , you know?”

 _Oh_ , Carol thinks looking at _her_ Maria’s eyes, her own blood still blue and hair blonde, _this is what it feels like to let go_.

* * *

Natasha gives her a real assignment a few months after she gets back. Asgardians of all shapes and sizes are gathered out on the lawn, so Carol kind of figures it out before Natasha even says anything. They need a home. Carol is some sort of compass.

“Want to come, Nat?” She asks, mostly joking.

“Nope. I promised to visit Morgan tomorrow.” Natasha pops the p in the word _nope_ and Carol feels for the first time that she’s actually talking to someone who is in their mid-twenties. “I also have a date with Steve’s granddaughter’s friend.”

“That’s a thing?”

“You can’t say no when a fossil recommends someone to you.”

They both laugh and it’s kind of nice. Carol thinks they might be friends. Natasha tilts her head in the direction of the Asgardians.

“You know, one fossil to another, I think you’d like Valkyrie.”

Carol briefly remembers her as some sort of deity that can ride a horse standing up. But she isn’t really sure what Natasha is saying until they are about to leave.

Everyone has boarded the ship except for the two of them. They are at its entrance, route mapped out, when Valkyrie turns to her, smiling. Her eyes are fierce and her smile is a challenge. Carol feels like she's just woken up, like someone's finally turned the light on.

“Race you.” Valkyrie says.

* * *

Carol feels a new electricity when she kisses Valkyrie for the first time somewhere in the middle of space. She thinks of how lucky she is that this is the universe she got.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!


End file.
